In "To God Alone Be Glory," the fruit of extensive study and research, Harold Daniels tells the fascinating story of the history of Reformed worship in America, from the 1600s to the present. He describes the development and objectives of the "Book of Common Worship" and explores how the book itself serves as an agenda for liturgical reform within the church. In a substantive second part of the book, Daniels provides the sources of the prayers and other materials used in the "Book of Common Worship." Persons involved in planning, presenting, studying, or teaching about Presbyterian worship will benefit greatly from having a copy of this comprehensive resource in their personal library.

This collection of children's sermons communicates the gospel to youngsters on their level and in a way that interests them. Just as Jesus referred to common objects when he taught, these lessons use everyday items to illustrate the them. Each message includes the scriptural background and a list of materials needed.

By its very nature, the ideals of religion entail sin and failure. Judaism has its own language and framework for sin that expresses themselves both legally and philosophically. Both legal questions - circumstances where sin is permissible or mandated, the role of intention and action - as well as philosophical questions - why sin occurs and how does Judaism react to religious crisis - are considered within this volume. This book will present the concepts of sin and failure in Jewish thought, weaving together biblical and rabbinic studies to reveal a holistic portrait of the notion of sin and failure within Jewish thought.

This program involves children of all ages and one adult with a few participants or many. While the narrative dialogue is being read, a silent, active nativity scene is shown to illustrate the first Christmas present ever.

While courses in Bible and theology typically require research papers, particularly at the graduate level, very few include training in research. Professors have two options: use valuable class time to teach students as much as they can, or lower their standards with the understanding that students cannot be expected to complete tasks for which they have never been prepared. From Topic to Thesis: A Guide to Theological Research offers a third option. This affordable and accessible tool walks students through the process, focusing on five steps: finding direction, gathering sources, understanding issues, entering discussion and establishing a position. Its goal is to take students directly from a research assignment to a research argument-in other words, from topic to thesis.

One of the most basic questions for any legal system is that of methodology: how one interprets, analyzes, weighs, and applies a mass of often competing legal rules, precedents, practices, customs, and traditions to reach final determinations and practical guidance about the correct legal-prescribed course of action in any given situation. Questions of legal methodology raise not only practical concerns, but theoretical and philosophical ones as well. We expect law to be more than the arbitrary result of a given decision maker's personal preferences, and so we demand that legal methodologies be principled as well as practical. These issues are especially acute in religious legal systems, where the stakes are raised by concerns for respecting not just human, but divine law. Despite this, the major scholars and codifiers of halakhah, or Jewish law, have only rarely explicated their own methods for reaching principled legal decisions. This book explains the major jurisprudential factors driving the halakhic jurisprudence of Rabbi Yehiel Mikhel Epstein, twentieth-century author of the Arukh Hashulchan-the most comprehensive, seminal, and original modern restatement of Jewish law since Maimonides. Reasoning inductively from a broad review of hundreds of rulings from the Orach Chaim section of the Arukh Hashulchan, the book teases out and explicates ten core halakhic principles that animate Rabbi Epstein's halakhic decision-making. Along the way, it compares the Arukh Hashulchan methodology to that of the Mishna Berura. This book will help any reader understand important methodological issues in both Jewish and general jurisprudence.

"Little" Thoughts for the Day is a Christian source of encouraging thoughts for pre-school - 5th grade students relating to issues that they often deal with on a daily basis throughout the school year. It can be used by elementary administrators/teachers to help students start their day with uplifting thoughts before beginning their school day or by parents who wish to share the thoughts with their children before they leave for school each day. Formatted according to the school year calendar, "Little" Thoughts for the Day includes thoughts relating to various holidays and school activities that make a "big" difference for "little" people.

This collection of essays constitute an extended argument for an anthropocentric, human-focused, study of religious practices. The basic premise of the argument, offered in the opening section, is that there is nothing special or extraordinary about human behaviors and constructs that are claimed to have uniquely religious status and authority. Instead, they are fundamentally human and so the scholar of religion is engaged in nothing more or less than studying humans across time and place and all their complex existence-that includes creating more-than-human beings and realities. As an extended and detailed example of such an approach, the second part of the book contains essays that address practices, rhetoric and other data in early Christianities within Greco-Roman cultures and religions. The underlying aim is to insert studies of the New Testament and non-canonical texts, most often presented as "biblical studies," into the anthropocentric study of religion proposed in the opening section. For a general reading of modern biblical scholarship makes clear the assumption that the Christian bible is a "sacred text" whose principal raison d'etre is to stand, fetish-like, as the foundational and highest authority in matters moral, ritual or theological; how might we instead approach the study of these texts if they are nothing more or less than human documents deriving from situations that were themselves all too human? Braun's Jesus and Addiction to Origins seeks to answer just that question-doing so in a way that readers working outside Christian origins will undoubtedly find useful applications for the people, places, and historical periods that they study.

This book looks at various educational perspectives throughout history to equip educators today for the task of reclaiming Christian education.

Mit der Einfuhrung der Bildungs- und Orientierungsplane fur die fruhe Bildung in Kindertagesstatten wird die Bedeutung von (inter)religiosen und philosophischen Kompetenzen von ErzieherInnen mit Nachdruck betont. Wie aber erleben die Professionellen in der fruhpadagogischen Praxis selbst die damit verbundenen Inhalte und Anforderungen? Am Beispiel baden-wurttembergischer Kindergarten wird dieser Frage in der vorliegenden Studie empirisch nachgegangen. Dabei ist ein Kennzeichen der Arbeit der Blick von der Eerziehungswissenschaft aus."

Hiermit wird der Vortrag, den ich am 20. Januar 1971 in der Klasse fur Geisteswissenschaften der Rheinisch-Westfalischen Akademie der Wissen schaften gehalten habe, im Druck vorgelegt. Die ursprungliche Fassung ist betrachtlich erweitert und der Gang der Untersuchung stellenweise modi fiziert worden. Gemass einer mit dem damaligen Sekretar der Klasse, Herrn Prof. Kotting, und seinem Nachfolger im Amt, Herrn Prof. Dihle, getrof fenen Absprache sind hierbei auch die Beitrage zu der dem Vortrag folgenden Diskussion verwertet worden. An ihr haben sich als Mitglieder der Akade mie oder geladene Gaste die Herren Professoren Dihle, Hegel, Klinkenberg, Kotting, Landgrebe, Lausberg, Lubbe, Ohly und Schall er beteiligt, denen fur ihre kritischen Hinweise und erganzenden Ausfuhrungen auch hier herz lich zu danken ist. Die von Dieter Schaller in freundschaftlicher Weise ge botene Moglichkeit, mit ihm die Ergebnisse unmittelbar vor der Drucklegung erneut zu erortern, ist fur mich ein willkommener Anlass, um ihm meine dankbare Verbundenheit an dieser Stelle zu bezeugen. Die Veroffentlichung geht zufallig in einem Zeitpunkt zum Druck, in dem sich die Erhebung Gregors VII. auf den papstlichen Stuhl zum neunhundert sten Male jahrt. Anders als in der Sturmzeit des Kulturkampfs vor hundert Jahren, hat unsere Gegenwart von dem weltgeschichtlich folgenreichen Ereig nis, das sich am 22. April 1073 vollzogen hat, auffallend wenig Notiz ge nommen."